The Naming of Cats Is A Difficult Matter
by alexabeamer
Summary: A Lewis and His Dark Materials crossover  After working their first case back in Oxford, Inspector Lewis and his dæmon Ellie ponder their new partners, the enigmatic Sergeant Hathaway and his dæmon.


The Naming of Cats Is A Difficult Matter

Author's Note: I've been re-reading author Philip Pullman's _His Dark Materials_ series and just finished watched all five seasons of the British detective crime drama, _Lewis_ earlier today. This is the result of these two interests fusing together.

Hope you enjoy!

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><p>"So, what do we think of him?" Lewis asked his dæmon a few days after he'd arrived back in Oxford. Ellie was curled up on their sofa next to him, her head resting on his knee like she was an ordinary dog rather than his dæmon.<p>

Ellie had settled three days after Lewis had turned twelve years old. He still had the picture his mum had taken of the pair of them that day, and had hung it up on the stretch of wall between the doors of his latest flat's only bathroom and the hall closet. The picture was small, its colors faded with age, and depicted a young boy, dark-haired and grinning, sitting on the small lawn in front of a house, arms flung around the neck of his dog dæmon, which looked like an unusually robust Border Collie with perked ears.

"What do we think of _who_?" Ellie asked, shifting closer. Lewis reached down to scratch the spot of puppy-soft fur just behind her ears, and smiled when he saw one of her hind legs twitch a little in response, her nails scraping against the fabric of the couch.

"That new sergeant of ours, Hathaway."

They hadn't expected a taxi service to greet them at the airport, and had been oddly relieved to find out that the man holding up the sign with _LEWIS_ blocked out in spiky black lettering was a policeman, though it was soon made abundantly clear that Hathway wasn't like any policeman Lewis and Ellie had encountered before. Even after working a case together, Lewis knew next to nothing about Hathaway, save what little the man had told him and what Lewis had observed.

"He's skinny, like he needs a few decent meals under his belt," Ellie said quietly. It didn't tell Lewis anything useful, such as how his dæmon actually felt; sometimes he worried that Ellie was a better actress than he could ever be.

"And he smokes. I can smell it on him." Ellie said with a disapproving huff, wrinkling her nose as though the scent was still bothering her.

"_Ellie_," Lewis grumbled, tweaking one of her ears. He took a sip from the beer in his hand, and stretched his legs out in front of him a bit more.

"He's young. To be doing the kind of job we do, I mean," Ellie said, and Lewis could tell that, despite knowing the lad less than an entire day, she was already a little worried about him. They both knew how the job could grind you down, work away at you until there was nothing left but cynicism & loneliness.

"I thought so too," Lewis said. "What do you make of his dæmon?"

"She's nice," Ellie said, shrugging in a way normal dogs didn't have the musculature for but dog dæmons did.

"Nice? Is that it?" he asked, puzzled.

"I guess," was all Ellie said. "She doesn't speak much. At least, not to me."

"Did you get her name?" Lewis asked her. "I know Hathaway mentioned it when he introduced himself at the airport, but I can't remember it now. It wasn't a common name, I can remember that much. Begins with 'r,' doesn't it? Ref-something?"

"Rifka," Ellie supplied helpfully after a moment. "She said her name was Rifka."

"Yeah, Rifka, that sounds about right. Knew it was something funny like that," Lewis said, nodding slowly. "Rifka," he repeated, committing the name to memory. Hathaway was his sergeant now, so he felt it was only right to remember the name of the other man's dæmon, even if Lewis wouldn't use it for a while.

Dæmons could interact freely with other dæmons, but the rules were different when it came to humans. Unless you knew the other person well, calling someone's dæmon by its name, or even talking to it, was considered a gross breach of social etiquette. Of course, the bond between a sergeant and a detective was quite different from a normal workplace relationship, and was often described in terms usually reserved for marriage, but not many people outside the police force understood this. And seeing as Lewis had only known Hathaway for a short while, he thought it best if he played it safe, at least until he'd spent more time around Hathaway.

"It's a bit of an odd name, isn't it?" Lewis said.

"We've heard odder," Ellie said. She licked a little of the condensation off Lewis' beer bottle.

"True, true," Lewis agreed, thinking back to some of the dæmon names he'd heard over the years. He and Ellie had seen some downright weird dæmons, and heard equally weird names for them, including some names spelt like someone had chosen the letters at random from a computer keyboard that was missing a few buttons.

"Do you know what Rifka is?" Lewis asked, thinking back to when they'd first met the sergeant.

Every police officer went through a series of courses designed to train them to notice other people's dæmons; the kind of animal a dæmon settled as said a lot about a person's personality, and even if suspects didn't say anything or even visibly react in interrogation, how their dæmons behaved could tell experienced coppers all they needed to know.

With Morse, Lewis and Ellie had spent many long hours researching animals, trying to pin down the exact species or genus of a suspect's dæmon. They'd gotten pretty good at it after a few cases, and still knew quite a bit about exotic animals.

But Hathaway's dæmon was something they'd never seen before.

"No idea," Ellie said, nudging his hand with her nose to make him start petting her again. Lewis hadn't realized he'd stopped. "I'd say she's probably some kind of small wild cat, like an ocelot."

Lewis didn't answer. He took a sip of his beer, and settled back against the couch more fully, closing his eyes so he could picture Hathaway's dæmon more clearly in his mind. He tried to remember any dæmons he'd encountered in past cases that had resembled Rifka.

"She's too big to be an ocelot," he said after a few minutes. "Too tall. Leggy. Like Hathaway himself, I suppose," he said, remembering Rifka's impossibly long legs, and how the dæmon's head had been level with Hathaway's knees when she stood next to him.

"But ocelots have markings like hers, don't they?" asked Ellie, and beneath his fingers, Lewis felt his dæmon's ears perk up with interest, like when a new case landed on their desk. Lewis took another sip of his beer, surprised to find that he was almost done with the bottle.

"Nah, they've got brown spots, I think," he said, yawning. "And Rifka's got black spots _and_ stripes."

Despite wracking their collective memories for any dæmons that looked anything close to Rifka, exhaustion soon made them give up trying to guess exactly what animal Rifka was. When they crawled into bed a short while later, Ellie stretched out next to Lewis on what had used to be Val's side, they were asleep the moment after their heads touched the pillows.

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><p>Well, how was it? Not too terrible, I hope... Please, any criticisms or comments are welcome with open arms, even if it's just to say how much my writing sucked.<p>

OK, I know I didn't mention any specifics here about what Ellie and Rifka actually are, but I did that for a reason (one _beyond_ being an annoying twit). I'd love to hear what you think Ellie and Rifka are, and if I've made good dæmon decisions. If you didn't like the dæmon I chose for either Hathaway or Lewis himself, please tell me what you would have chosen and why - I'm fascinated by the idea of dæmons, patronuses, and any other animal representation of an individual's soul, and would love to hear other people's thoughts.

I have (most of) an entire crime-centered fic planned out involving the universe set up in this little snippet. Anyone interested? (If things go my way, it should be up in the next few weeks. Provided, of course, that there's someone/some people willing to read the bloody thing! Let me know!)


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